The US state of Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) has distributed over $25 billion in oil revenues since 1982.
Every year, the PFD collects revenues from oil and mining and redistributes payouts to each and every one of its citizens.
The average Alaskan receives around US$1,000 of their share of this colleceted wealth from the state’s commons.
The money is distributed annually with no strings attached. So a family of four would receive around US$4,000.
Mind you, this is just from Alaska’s mineral surplus.
Imagine how much more in the way of annual dividends could be redistributed to Alaskans if all possible sources of economic surplus was collected, like economic rent from land, which has exponentially more wealth generating potential than oils and mining.
Alaska is essentially a glimpse of what a Citizen’s Dividend would look like. A smaller-scale template.
The PFD’s existence as a real-world policy that has existed for nearly half a century also proves that a universal basic income funded from economic rent is not some pie-in-the-sky fantasy.
